Cotham at 50: A Sermon

The L’Arche community in London celebrated its 40th anniversary during the time I was involved: ‘Fabulous at 40!’ as the slogan - we burnt our alliterative boats ahead of being 50.

What other ‘F’ words could be used?: Fractious? Fading? Feeble?

Flaky?

What adjectives might capture the community we are celebrating today?

What kind of community are we?

What kind of community are we called to be?

I’m going to explore this by suggesting three apt ‘F-words’!

What is it we celebrate when we celebrate Christian community? More than a collective ‘pat on the back’…

Inspired by the banner Nigel has found. the phrase:- ‘Here for others’ - in what ways is that true?

We are a community formed by story: by our own stories certainly - which is good to remember; including recognising we’re still creating our stories. But our legacy needs to be light, liberating and inclusive, with plenty of room for people to become part of the story and to narrate it in new ways.

We are a community formed by story beyond our own – the formational narratives of faith, living and active in our own time and place.

Let’s look at today’s selection of formational narratives – the stories that shape us still.

Nehemiah - a community re-forming itself after exile. Formed by memory certainly; but also by hope and by calling.

It’s a beautiful image of scripture in worship - more than listening - a careful interpretation offered for all the people;

Feasting on God’s commandments gives way to feasting at shared tables - but not just a feast for those who are there… ”send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared”. Feasting in a faith community, however rich, is always a partial experience – always looking to those who are not with us - friends from the past, and friends we don’t yet know; the spare seat at Passover for Elijah is both memory and expectation.

Today’s Palestinian inspired feast that we’ll share after the service reminds us of the lives of a richly storied people who prepare their feasts as an act of beautiful resistance. This also calls us to an ever growing table - always willing to squeeze more in, or to step back for more guests, who are just our newest members.

Jesus’ words at the last supper… “I tell you, I will not eat this passover again until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God” - our feasting always anticipating that fullest of banquets.

So, here we are: Feasting at 50, and here we are as we feast: ‘Here we are for others’.

The feasting of Christians in Corinth.. scandalously partial and hierarchical – their community meals continually subverting the call to be a community embodying the life of Jesus. Wealthy given seats of honour and the meals timed at their convenience so that the poorer indentured labouring members of the community would arrive only when the feast was finished.

Paul told them in no uncertain terms they were eating judgement on themselves. To call them back to being constituted around their true and founding story Paul offered them an enduring picture of their life together as a living body – one body with many distinctive yet mutually dependent parts. A body that can’t disregard any of its parts, because when one part suffers all suffer.

And not just any body: the living, loving body of Christ.

This body, is always a body for the last and the lost and the least; always living for others; always looking and longing and loving beyond itself.

The Body of Christ: an always new fraternity of belonging - made alive to be the living presence of its head and its heart: as Jesus captures it repeatedly in John’s gospel: you in me; and me in you; and together in God.

So here we are: Fraternal at 50 - the Body of Christ - and so ‘Here we are for others’.

Being the Body of Christ is a calling to be continually formed and renewed around and by Jesus - to be a living embodiment of his story. Today’s gospel offers us, on this founding feast, Jesus’ own founding mission: the powerful Jubilee vision of lives set free and made whole: a vision that is proclaimed not simply as future hope but today’s reality.

‘Today’ is one of Jesus’ most powerful words - he speaks it to a people who have lost hope; whose faith has become caught up in the multiple oppressions of empire.

‘Today’, says Jesus, is the Jubilee of God’s justice and freedom;

‘Today’ have your vision of that Jubilee restored in lives set free from bondage and despair.

Communities constituted by Jesus are always orientated around the ‘today’ of Jesus: his call to awaken and live, and offer freedom.

Paul captures this liberating heart of Jesus’ mission by telling the early Christian community in Galatia: ‘For Freedom Christ has set us free’ - in other words our freedom is always for a wider and fuller freedom; the ‘Today’ of Jesus’ jubilee always needing to be announced.

We are formed as community as an act of beautiful resistance in the face of the multiple oppressions of our time: we feast as a fraternity of freedom.

So here we are: people of Freedom at 50, and in our freedom ‘Here we are for the freedom of others’.

Feasting at 50;

Fraternal at 50;

For freedom at 50;

Here together today because we are here for others.